Russia has used the "Field-21" electronic warfare system on the battlefield in Ukraine, which has carried out strong interference with the US GPS satellite signal, making the Ukrainian army's US-made "Excalibur" guided artillery shells and other precision strikes** useless.
However, this type of interference is not unique, and it can also affect the satellite navigation equipment of both sides, making them not work properly. Interestingly, China's Beidou satellite system may be able to become the "savior" of the Russian army.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Ling Zaluzhny, recently gave an interview to the American "Economist", in which he said that the electronic warfare capabilities of the Russian army have seriously weakened the artillery strike power of the Ukrainian army. In particular, the "Excalibur" GPS-guided artillery shells provided by the United States could have been hit very accurately, but under the interference of the Russian army's "Field-21" electronic warfare system, the strike effect was greatly reduced.
Vikram Mittal, an associate professor at the School of American Affairs, analyzed that the Russian army's "Field-21" electronic warfare system can interfere with GPS satellite signals, so that the "Excalibur" shells deviate from the predetermined trajectory and cannot accurately hit the target.
Excalibur shells are the strongest ** of the M777 howitzers that the United States supports in Ukraine. The power of one "Excalibur" shell is equivalent to dozens of 152-mm shells of the Russian army. This kind of guided artillery with a long range and high accuracy allows the M777 howitzer, a towed artillery, to effectively suppress the Russian army's 122 mm and 152 mm self-propelled guns, and can also severely damage the Russian army's tank troops.
It's a pity that things must be reversed, when the "Excalibur" shells were turned into "scrap metal" by the "Field-21" electronic warfare system, the Ukrainian army's artillery advantage disappeared all at once, as if it had returned to the Cold War era from the "era of precision strikes", and even shaken the balance of the Russian-Ukrainian front.
In fact, the Russian army and the Ukrainian army are now very dependent on satellite navigation, and many guidance ** are guided by satellites, such as tactical missiles, gliding bombs, guided rockets, cruise missiles, etc., and almost all UAVs, including small hand-held UAVs, need satellite navigation to fly. Therefore, if the satellite navigation signal can be "cut off", it can greatly weaken the combat capability of the other side.
However, the "Field-21" method of jamming satellite navigation signals is a "double-edged sword", and it will also make the satellite navigation equipment of both sides unusable. Among them, part of the reason is that some equipment of the Russian army also uses GPS satellite signals from the United States, and more importantly, the frequency of Russia's own "GLONASS" satellite signals and GPS signals is very close.
Specifically, Russia's "GLONASS" satellite signals use the L1, L2, and L3 frequency bands, respectively, with a center frequency of 157542 MHz, 122760 MHz, 138105 MHz, corresponding to civil positioning and navigation, high-precision positioning and navigation and enhanced signals. The GPS satellite signals in the United States use the L1, L2, and L5 frequency bands respectively, and the center frequency is 157542 MHz, 122760 MHz, 117645 MHz. In other words, the satellite signals of the United States and Russia are completely overlapping on the L1 and L2 bands.
Although the Russian army's "Field-21" electronic warfare system is a high-tech product of the Russian army, its jamming module is not refined enough to distinguish the difference between US and Russian satellite signals by means other than frequency. Therefore, as long as the Russian army turns on the jammer of "Field-21", then the US and Russian satellite navigation equipment within the jamming range will fail. You must know that the interference range of "Tianye-21" can reach 150 square kilometers, and such a large area will become a "dead zone for US and Russian satellite navigation".
However, for this interference method that will hurt both the enemy and the enemy, God still gave the Russian army an "antidote", that is, China's Beidou satellite system. At that time, because the United States and Russia occupied the "optimal signal frequency band" first, leaving only China with the "sub-optimal frequency band", this "sub-optimal frequency band" became a huge advantage when the satellite signals of the United States and Russia were interfered with.
Beidou satellites use the B1, B2, and B3 bands, and the center frequency is 1561098 MHz, 120714 MHz, 126852 MHz, corresponding to civilian positioning and navigation, high-precision positioning and navigation and enhanced signals, completely avoiding the interference of the Russian army "Field-21".
In this way, when the Russian army turns on the "Field-21", the GPS and GLONASS signals of more than ten kilometers around it will be affected, and then there will only be two signals on the entire battlefield: Galileo and Beidou. The Galileo system developed in Europe is known as the "late Galileo system", which is not only slow in progress, poor in technology, but also very poor in stability, and has even had a long-term large-scale failure, which has been used as a spare tire by the whole world and is not very reliable. In this way, only the Beidou system can play a role, which is equivalent to the one-way transparency of the battlefield to the "Beidou system", especially the advanced artillery, tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles of the United States, which are highly dependent on GPS, will be unilaterally suppressed.
From this point of view, if the Russian army can use a large number of Beidou navigation signals, then with jamming equipment such as "Field-21", it will gain a huge asymmetric advantage on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield. In contrast, the "loss of artillery superiority", which the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army feared, was only the tip of the iceberg.
The Beidou Satellite System is a global satellite navigation system independently developed by China, which has completed the global networking, covering more than 200 countries and regions around the world, and provides high-precision, high-reliability and high-security positioning, navigation and timing services. The Beidou satellite system not only has civilian value, but also has important military value, which can improve the accuracy of strikes, improve combat effectiveness, and enhance the ability of information warfare.
The advantage of the Beidou satellite system is that it not only uses traditional radio signals, but also uses short message signals, which can achieve two-way communication and provide functions such as location reporting, navigation information, and emergency distress. The Beidou satellite system also has anti-jamming capabilities, which can improve the anti-jamming performance of the signal and reduce the possibility of being interfered by the enemy through encryption, frequency hopping, frequency spreading, etc.
The Beidou satellite system also has compatibility with other satellite navigation systems, and can be interconnected with GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and other systems to achieve multi-system integrated navigation and improve positioning accuracy and reliability. The Beidou satellite system can also be coordinated with other space infrastructures, such as remote sensing satellites, communication satellites, meteorological satellites, etc., to achieve spatial information integration and provide more comprehensive space services.
To sum up, the Beidou satellite system is a national project of strategic significance, which not only provides strong support for China's economic and social development, but also provides a strong guarantee for China's national defense and security. On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, the Beidou satellite system may be able to become the "savior" of the Russian army, allowing the Russian army to have an advantage in electronic warfare, breaking the GPS monopoly of the United States, and changing the pattern of war.